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John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Today we have HIPAA and Facebook and they're diametrically opposed. #CHIME16

I tweeted this from the CHIME Fall Forum last year, but the idea is still on my mind. First, are HIPAA and Facebook diametrically opposed? Second, if they are or they aren’t, what does that mean for healthcare?

I’m not sure the intent of the person who said that Facebook and HIPAA were diametrically opposed, but I think it’s a reasonable observation. Facebook cares about getting and sharing as much information about you as possible. HIPAA cares about trying to protect your information.

While I think this is fundamentally how these companies think, the reality of what they do is much closer than people would think at first glance. While Facebook certainly wants to collect all of your personal data, it also has become quite sophisticated in its efforts to allow you to control how your data is shared. This wasn’t something that came naturally to them, but was forced upon them by years of crazy indiscretions which forced their hand.

HIPAA has come from the other end. While HIPAA is the portability act and not the privacy act (common mistake), that’s not how it was viewed when it was implemented. Everyone in healthcare saw HIPAA as a way to inhibit data sharing as opposed to a way to provide a framework for secure data sharing. In many cases, that’s still how people use HIPAA today. However, we’re starting to see that change as healthcare organizations have realized that their organizations need to share data. While not as progressive as Facebook in their data sharing controls, healthcare has become much more specific about how, when, what, and where they share patient data.

While we can find plenty of privacy and security issues with Facebook and HIPAA, I’d argue that both of them have become much more sophisticated in their approach to privacy and security. I believe this trend will only continue to get better.

What does all of this mean for healthcare?

Healthcare can learn a lot from Facebook when it comes to creating sophisticated privacy options that put the patient in control of their health data and allow the patient to control if and when that data is shared. However, we shouldn’t be surprised when we implement these controls and patients start sharing in ways that might feel risky to us. We may want to consider even more training on these sophisticated sharing options than what Facebook did for their users.

No doubt there’s a power in health data and much of that power is unleashed when it’s shared with the right people. The best thing we can do to unleash this power isn’t to create a free for all data sharing approach, but instead to take a more sophisticated data sharing approach that puts the patient at the center of the decision making process.

The following is a guest blog post by Takeshi Suganuma, Senior Director of Security at Proficio.
Just meeting minimum HIPAA safeguards is not enough to keep patient data secure. This should come as no surprise when you consider that HIPAA was developed as a general framework to protect PHI for organizations ranging from small medical practices to very large healthcare providers and payers. After all, one size seldom fits all.

While HIPAA is a general, prescriptive framework for security controls and procedures, HIPAA disclosure rules and penalties are very specific and have increased impact as a result of the Omnibus Final Rule enacted last year. The CIOs and CSOs we talk to are not willing to risk their organization’s reputation by just implementing the minimum HIPAA safeguards.

The collection, analysis, and monitoring of security events is a prime example of where medium to large-sized organizations must do much more than just record and examine activity as prescribed by HIPAA.

The challenge to effectively monitor and prioritize security alerts is exacerbated by the changing security threat landscape. Unlike the visible incursions of the past, new attacks employ slow and low strategies. Attackers are often able to sys­tematically pinpoint security weaknesses and then cover all traces of their presence as they move on to penetrate the other critical IT assets.

Hackers are using multiple attack vectors including exploiting vulnerabilities in medical devices and printers. Networked medical devices represent a significant security challenge for hospitals, because their IT teams cannot upgrade the underlying operating system embedded into these devices. Many medical devices using older versions of Windows and Linux have known security vulnerabilities and are at risk of malware contamination.

Insider threats comprise a significant risk for healthcare organizations. Examples of insider threats include employees who inappropriately access the medical records, consultants who unintentionally breach an organization’s confidentiality, and disgruntled employees seeking to harm their employer. Insider activity can be much more difficult to pinpoint than conventional external activity as insiders have more privileges than an external attacker. Security event monitoring and advanced correlation techniques are needed to identify such suspicious behavior. For example, a single event, such as inappropriate access of a VIP’s medical records, might go unnoticed, but when the same person is monitored saving files to a USB drive or exhibiting unusual email activity, these correlated events should trigger a high priority alert.

The volume of security alerts generated in even a mid-size hospital is staggering – tens of millions a day. Without a tool to centrally collect and correlate security events, it is extremely difficult to detect and prioritize threats that could lead to a PHI data breach. Log management and SIEM systems are part of the solution, but these are complex to administer and require regular tweaking to reflect new security and compliance use cases.

Technology alone is just a starting point. Unfortunately, hackers don’t restrict their activities to local business hours and nor should the teams responsible for the security of their organization. Effective security event monitoring requires technology, process, and people. Many healthcare organizations that lack in-house IT security resources are turning to Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) who provide around-the-clock Security Operation Center (SOC) services.

The challenge for today’s security teams, whether internal or outsourced, is to accurately prioritize alerts and provide actionable intelligence that allows a fast and effective response to critical issues. Tomorrow’s goal is to move beyond reporting incidents to anticipating the types of suspicious behaviors and patterns of multi-stage attacks that could lead to data being compromised. Multi-vector event correlation, asset modeling, user profiling, threat intelligence and predictive analytics are among the techniques used to achieve preventive threat detection. The end game is a preemptive defense where real-time analysis of events triggers an automated response to prevent an attack.

The increasing cost of litigation and the loss of reputation that result from an impermissible disclosure of PHI are driving healthcare organizations to build robust security controls and monitor and correlate real-time security events. HIPAA guidelines are a great start, but not enough if CIOs want to sleep easily at night.

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money.

One of the most common sources of confusion about the meaningful use requirements is the Privacy and Security Risk Analysis measure. As I discussed in a past Meaningful Use Monday post, according to CMS, practices that are HIPAA compliant are likely in pretty good shape on this measure. For those physicians, what’s needed is documentation of the steps that were taken to review HIPAA compliance, the deficiencies identified, and what was done to remediate these exposures. (For more information, see the meaningful use chapter in ONC’s “Guide to Privacy and Security of Health Information.”)

This begs the question, “What exactly is HIPAA compliance?” I recently came upon the “Privacy and Security Training Game” that was created by ONC’s Chief Privacy Officer and couldn’t resist playing. While a lot of the information provided is quite basic for those with expertise in the privacy and security arena, as you progress through the game, the questions become more challenging. It’s definitely a fun way to introduce staff to the issues and increase awareness about the importance of safeguarding patient information.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

As an extension to my previous post called “Texting is Not HIPAA Secure” I wanted to point out some data that Wired posted about Telcom’s SMS message retention policies.

The information was found in a Department of Justice document and I believe is a good illustration for why PHI should not be sent through traditional SMS text messaging. Here’s the chart that wired created showing the major Telcom providers record retention policies:
The top 2 sections are the most important when it comes to secure text messaging. Last I checked, the telcom servers weren’t HIPAA secure. Not to mention, I can’t say I’ve seen a Telcom provider sign a business associate agreement with a healthcare provider. Neither of things are likely to ever happen.

The challenge is that text message is so valuable in healthcare. It’s such a simple and flexible way to communicate between doctors, nurses, staff, HIM, etc etc etc. This is why I predict over the next year we’re going to see a huge uptick in adoption of secure text messaging by third parties. The technology is there. We just need wider spread adoption of it in healthcare.

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

Time again to take a look around the EMR and healthcare IT twittersphere at some of the best tweets. We’ve got some really interesting tweets to consider along with a tweet that includes a video of the real Patch Adams (many I love that movie) in his element. If I ever get a chance to meet Patch Adams, I’m going to jump at the chance. I’m certain that he’s endless entertainment.

I’ve talked quite a bit about the challenge of EHR mergers. I’ve definitely not talked about the challenge to EHR when hospitals merge. I can see this being a great future topic for Hospital EMR and EHR. There are a lot of intricacies involved in the subject and will be a very important topic as EHR becomes more widely adopted.

This is an interesting tweet. I guess my challenge with the idea is that I bet off-the-shelf laptops and desktop computers meet few HIPAA, meaningful use requirements either. The important difference is that more can be done on a desktop to secure it than most smart phones. Although, I think this will continue to change over time.

On this topic, I’ve seen more and more people making the argument that a virtual environment is the key to good security on a smartphone. This is a good way to secure a smartphone, but it also is a good way to kill the usability of a smartphone. I’m still not sure exactly how we’re going to bridge the divide.

RT @motorcycle_guy: T2: Interop is happening now in HealthIT, it just takes a bit of time for the growth to be visible. #HITsm

This video is outrageous, hilarious and fantastic. I’m not sure what the medical world thinks of Patch Adams, but I welcome fresh takes. No doubt Patch Adams is a unique individual that’s not afraid to stretch the cultural norms.

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

Sure, most readers will know that it’s important to have business associates who know how to handle potential HIPAA concerns. I’d wager, however, given the outbreak of partner-related data losses of late, many facilities and medical practices aren’t subjecting their business partners to severe enough scrutiny.

There’s many, many ways a business associate can drop the ball, especially if you’re not keeping them informed. For example, consider the case of South Shore Hospital of South Weymouth, MA, which lost boxes of unencrypted backup tapes en route to associate Archive Data Solutions. The tapes stolen included HIPAA-protected ePHI (SSNs, names, financial account numbers and diagnoses).

While the business associate may have done wrongly, it was the hospital which was fined a total of $475,000 over the incident, which affected over 800,000 individuals. The state’s Attorney General slapped the hospital with these fines because it hadn’t done due diligence to make sure the associate had appropriate safeguards in place.

So, how do you protect yourself in your relationship with data management associates? The following list of criteria, supplied by Thu Pham, seem likely to do the trick:

Business associate has been independently audited across all 54 HIPAA citations and 136 audited components; they’ve passed with 100% compliance and can show you a copy of their report.

They can tell you the particular technologies they’ll use to meet HIPAA security standards.

They have documented policies and procedures already in place, including policies related to breach notification.

They have proof their employees are trained on how to handle your PHI, with last completed dates of training.

I might also ask them how they train their workers, as all of this preparation might be worth a lot less if policies are loose. Now, over to you. Do you think this list is sufficient to protect your institution? Are there items you’d add or clarify?

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

I previously posted the somewhat controversial post: Email is Not HIPAA Secure. It was an extremely important post and included 54 incredible comments discussing email security and email in how it relates to HIPAA. Today I want to discuss the security issues related to text (SMS) messages.

The short story is: Texting (SMS) is NOT HIPAA Secure

I recently did a focus group to discuss physician communication. At one point I asked how many of them use text messages to communicate with other doctors. All of them acknowledged that they used it and that they were using it more and more. I then asked how many sent PHI (protected health information) in the text messages that they sent. While the response wasn’t as strong likely because they knew it was a loaded question, they all acknowledged that PHI was sent by text message all of the time.

One doctor even commented, “They’re not going to put us all in jail.”

There is some validity to this comment. They’re not going to go around like an old school lynch mob putting physicians in jail because they sent some patient information in a text message. Although, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t go around handing out hefty fines for HIPAA violations.

Let me be clear that there are secure text message platforms out there. I’ve actually been thinking about this quite a bit lately since I’ve been advising a local Vegas Tech iPhone app called docBeat that offers this secure text message functionality for free. In fact, there are quite a few companies that are trying to provide this functionality. Although, I like docBeat because it offers a whole suite of Physician Communication Tools and not just secure text messaging. I think there’s value in a doctor only to have to go to one place for all their communication needs. In a future post, I’ll do a full write up on what docBeat’s offering physicians.

At some point, I think doctors are going to turn the corner and realize that the standard SMS text messaging service that every cell phone has these days is not the right way to communicate. Besides the fact that standard text messaging isn’t secured, it’s also stored forever on the server of your cell phone service provider. Most doctors likely haven’t thought that everything they’ve sent over text could be brought back to haunt them forever.

Other problems with standard text messaging is that you don’t really know what happens with the text message once its sent. Did the text message actually send? Did the person you sent the text message actually receive it? If they received the text message have they read it?

The great thing is that we all finally have realized the value of simple communication with a text message. Now we just need to move to these new secure text messaging platforms that solve the security, reliability and tracking issues with standard text messaging.

I’m in New York City this week for the second Mobile Health Expo, which wrapped up Thursday afternoon. You may have seen the story I wrote for InformationWeek based on one session related to the security of networked medical devices.

Since I just do news and not commentary for InformationWeek, I figured EMR and HIPAA—specifically, the HIPAA part— was the perfect forum to discuss a small controversy that I may have stirred up with that story.

The two presenters from Indianapolis-based security firm eProtex talked about how connected medical devices have recently been popping up all over the place. “As little as two years ago, we checked some hospitals and found that there was less than one networked clinical device per bed,” eProtex Executive Director Earl Reber said.

With network connection and exposure to the Internet came heightened threats from viruses and malware, both internal and external, Reber and eProtex Chief Security Officer Derek Brost said. Sometimes it’s because devices are so old that they still run DOS and simply weren’t built for the HIPAA era. Other times, the greater reliance on various versions of Windows makes medical devices vulnerable to attacks.

Often, Brost said, hospitals are trying to protecting the wrong assets. “It’s not the actual medical device in most cases [that is at risk]. It’s the individual patient’s health information,” he said.

All this makes a lot of sense, though it is important to note that the warnings are coming from a security vendor with a real interest in selling products and services to prevent and combat insidious threats to medical equipment and other connected devices such as smartphones and tablets.

This was not lost on at least one person, “ZigZagZeke.” In a comment titled “Ignorance,” this poster said in no uncertain terms:

The speaker is using scare tactics to try to make sales of his protection software. Makers of such software are desperately trying to convince people that their Apple products need protection, because as more and more users switch to Apple, sales of anti-virus software are declining. This use of scare tactics is know by an acronym: FUD, which stands for “fear, uncertainty, and doubt.” It is the speaker’s only hope.

I suspect some of the criticism was directed at me for not differentiating between malware and viruses or between Linux/Unix/Macintosh and Windows.

Did I screw up here by not pressing the speakers on these differences, or are Apple devices and operating systems becoming just as vulnerable to data corruption as Windows? Windows became a prime target not just because of security holes, but because of its ubiquity. Now, the iPad and iPhone seem to rule at least the physician market. Wouldn’t that critical mass put Apple iOS in the crosshairs of a growing number of hackers and malware spreaders?

So what’s the real story here? As devices get connected to EMRs and hospital networks and produce more protected health information (PHI), should healthcare providers be concerned about greater HIPAA liability? If so, where should they focus prevention efforts?

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John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 10 blogs containing over 8000 articles with John having written over 4000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 16 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John is co-founder of InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit and LinkedIn.

An interesting discussion happened in the comments about HIPAA secure fax services in regards to the security of email. Being a tech person who formerly managed a few different corporate email systems, sometimes I forget that many people don’t understand some of the details about the security (or lack of security) that’s provided by email.

The short story is: Email is NOT HIPAA Secure (at least in 99% of cases)

There is a way to encrypt email sent between 2 email systems, but so far a standard and mechanism for encryption between all the vast number of email providers has not been established. I won’t go into the details of why this is the case (cost of encryption, standards for encryption, etc), but suffice it to say that almost none of the email systems send encrypted email that would satisfy the HIPAA requirements.

In fact, most times when an EMR, PHR or other patient portal wants to send a secure email/message to someone they send an email which contains a link to an encrypted website that has a unique login. The reason they do this is because there’s no recognized and adopted standard for encryption of email. However, presenting Protected Health Information (PHI) through an encrypted webpage where someone has a unique login is HIPAA compliant and doesn’t require the receiving email system to understand the encryption. It’s a pain, but it’s the reality of privacy of health information right now.

One of the major reasons that many people think that email is secured is that a number of email providers (Gmail being the most famous for this) turned on encryption for all of their users. The misunderstanding is that this encryption is just for users logging in to check, read and send their email. It does not encrypt the email as it it sent from Gmail to the destination email system. Aleks, from Sfax described it similar to a postcard. It’s open where anyone listening can see what’s in the email with no traces left behind.

The only security email partially offers in this manner is the volume of emails that are sent. There’s such a huge volume of useless emails that there’s some security by obscurity benefits. Although, that security doesn’t meet well with the HIPAA requirements. Plus, remember that one thing that computers are great at doing is crunching large amounts of data.

One minor exception that I might make is that if you’re sending email in an internal email system, then it’s possible to set up email encryption. This is possible because you control the email system for the sender and the receiver and so there are ways to do this. However, I know very few people that have actually set this arrangement up. Probably because if they are on your internal email system they usually have access to your EMR and all the PHI can remain in the EMR instead of your email system.

Now many have said that you shouldn’t use the free email providers like Gmail. After reading this it should be clear. You shouldn’t use ANY email provider for sending PHI. So, whether you use Gmail or some other free email provider it shouldn’t matter since I’m sure you won’t be sending any PHI through email any more.

Of course, I’d recommend you use the free Google Apps version of Gmail since DrSmith@yourpractice.com is so much more professional than DrSmith985373@gmail.com. Although, that’s kind of a topic for a different discussion.

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